Surplus lines designation curriculum updated; good fit for retailers as well

After 10 years on the circuit, the surplus lines industry’s first designation has received a facelift. Beginning in January 2007, the Associate in Surplus Lines Insurance designation (ASLI) will be earned by passing exams based on two new required courses — ASLI 163, Surplus Lines Insurance Operations and ASLI 164, Surplus Lines Insurance Products — plus, two related elective courses. However, individuals who already hold a CPCU or RPLU designation only need to pass the two required courses.

A lot has changed in the surplus lines industry in the last 10 years, so the curriculum needed updating, said Kurt Bingeman, president of Russell Bond & Co., who is also a director of the Derek Hughes/NAPSLO Educational Foundation. The Foundation assisted the Insurance Institute of America in developing the ASLI designation for surplus lines professionals in the mid-1990s and in 1997 the first ASLI designations were awarded. This year, 163 new ASLI designations will be awarded at National Association of Professional Surplus Lines Offices’ annual convention in Chicago, Sept. 13-17. The new designees bring the total number to more than 1,000.

While the ASLI program was developed for professionals working in the surplus lines industry, retailers, regulators and legislators could benefit from the program as well, Bingeman said. “We think this would be a great designation for agency personnel to embrace,” Bingeman said. “Particularly as we’ve seen over the years that many independent agents are writing a larger and larger volume of their business in the surplus lines community and through wholesale brokers. It’s becoming a bigger part of their operation.”

Bingeman explained that when the initial ASLI course was put together there were no textbooks on excess and surplus lines. So NAPSLO asked a variety of experts to each contribute a chapter, which was then compiled into a textbook by the Institutes.

After10 years, the textbook needed updating. “We tried to clean up the program, update it and make it an easier read and a better study for the students,” Bingeman added — a process that took more than four years to do.

The new and improved ASLI curriculum now includes a course on surplus lines insurance products, which had not been previously included, Bingeman said.

“We wanted to try to explain what coverages are often in surplus lines and why, and also what products move into the surplus lines community and out again,” Bingeman said. He added that with the hard market over the last couple of years, his office has had to grow quite a bit. “We were looking for people but in my community there are not a lot of surplus lines people that we can attract so we basically had to grow our own staff,” he said. “The ASLI was very helpful in bringing people up to speed.” For more information on the ASLI designation program, contact IIA Customer Service at 800-644-2101 or email cserv@cpcuiia.org.